Supplies!

When your baby gets sick (and she will. You’ll wash your hands eleventy billion times and you’ll make every single person that even thinks about putting his grimy little digits near her perfect chubby face use hand sanitizer while they breathe in a different direction, but trust me when I tell you that you cannot and will not and absolutely can not stop your baby from getting sick), you’ll need to be ready. You’ll need things like more sleep and a fairy godmother wand to make all the horrible-ness go away, but those things I can’t give you. What I can give you is the check list of how to make it through a night of illness. Here’s what you’ll need.

A recliner. Forget these chairs that have hard wooden arms. Forget the truly adorable old timey rocker, even after you’ve painted it a pinterest approved shade of cool, it will never be comfortable at 3 am. Get yourself a recliner somewhere in the house that goes all the way back.

A boppy. Who cares if you never used it when you were feeding your baby. You’re going to need it now to rest your own two arms so that they don’t have to flex to keep a giant eight month old from rolling off into the floor when she adjusts herself without any warning.

A neck boppy. What’s that? You’ve never been to a baby shower where I give travel pillows out to unsuspecting mothers and tell them to put that by the chair they feed their baby in? Oh, well. It’s a travel pillow. If you have one for travelling, that’s great and all, but you may remove it from the feeding recliner and not remember to put it back. You will remember that you didn’t put it back at exactly 10:33 pm when you’ve fully arraigned yourself in the recliner and could fall asleep perfectly if only your neck wasn’t in all sorts of numbing odd pain. Leave it in the chair.

A blanket for your legs and feet. Tuck it in under the regular boppy.

A light blanket for your baby and your arms. If the baby has a fever you may not even need one at all for her, but your arms? They want to feel warm too. Don’t neglect them.

A clock in your line of sight. When you wake up and wonder how much longer you’ll have to sleep in this chair, you’ll want to do that math.

No night of being awakened every hour or two would be complete without the snuffly, snotty, sweaty baby. I hope you have one like mine that still smiles at 2:48 am, even when her nose is crusty and her eye is weeping. It’ll make all those minutes in that chair so very, very worth it.